


What Good is Something When Its Gone

by Bri211



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, just a small thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4010608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bri211/pseuds/Bri211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whirl muses on the fact that Trailcutter is dead and his funeral feels like it doesn't really matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Good is Something When Its Gone

Whirl had never cared much for funerals. There was no point, not when he had been part of the Wreckers. Not when he had seen both Autobot and Decepticon alike fall before him. What was the point in honoring a dead corpse when you could just remember the person in their final blaze of glory?

But today was different. Today, something had told Whirl to get his aft out of the berth, leave his habsuite and make his way down to the bridge for the ceremony. To sit in the far back row where he could be comfortable and just watch. He looked at the single coffin set up at the front of the room through his optic, clicking his claws together. 

The past week had been a whirlwind, starting with the Lost Light disappearing and ending with Brainstorm currently being locked down in the brig because of a time travel goose-chase he had led, in Whirl’s opinion, the most important mechs of the ship on. At some point though, at some point that no one really thought about until they had to finally deal with it, Trailcutter had been killed. 

It wasn’t like the information hadn’t been kept a secret from anyone. Almost as soon as First Aid and the others came on board, it was known. It was hard to hide someone Trailcutter’s size from those who hung around the main halls of the Lost Light. It was even harder to hide the fact his head wasn’t attached and had a massive hole in it. But one dead mech compared to about two dozen who had been poisoned in Swerve’s just hadn’t been that important. 

But here, in this room, it was important. It couldn’t be forgotten about. Brainstorm had been stopped, no one else was dead, but here was Trailcutter in a giant coffin. Whirl gave one quick look around the room to see who else had come to pay their respects to the mech who had died like a fool. Chromedome and Rewind sat together by the end of one pew. There was Ratchet and First Aid in another, and Whirl briefly wondered if that meant the medbay was actually empty for once. There was Hoist sitting in the front pew, his shoulders slumped. Riptide sat next to him, one of Trailcutter’s only drinking buddies who is actually here.. He had only been here for a moment, but even Megatron had made an appearance, standing in the back corner where no one else could see him. He had been gone almost as quickly as he came, but he had still showed up. But Whirl noticed that the other two who had been on that planet were missing, maybe the guilt of leaving Trailcutter and First Aid alone was eating at the inside of their tanks, maybe they were off thinking about how they could have tried to stop this death. Maybe they should have been the ones to…no this wasn’t a time to think of others. This was a time to think of Trailcutter, and Trailcutter wouldn’t have thought like that.

All he really can think about is how empty this place seems. How if he were to drop his claws or tap his foot, everyone who is in attendance would hear. He wonders where all those mechs who were usually seen drinking with Trailcutter were now, or if they only really cared when his was drunk and rambling and not sober by force and the new Director of Security. 

The blue mech shifts, trying to stay quiet for once, though he should be yelling instead. Trailcutter shouldn’t have died. Trailcutter shouldn’t have died because of the Decepticon Justice Division. There was irony in that. He had been one of the most dedicated Autobots Whirl had seen in his life and there he was, mutilated by the Decepticon Hunters. It was unfair in a way. All he had wanted to do was help others and that stupid, kind spark of his had been his downfall. 

Whirl is still staring at the coffin when Rodimus takes his place, Ultra Magnus beside him, and begins his speech about the fallen. The speech was clearly written in a rush, something Rodimus must have done when he had a spare moment between getting back and preparing the trial for Brainstorm. He didn’t have Drift to do his speeches anymore, and it was clear he never knew the right words to say to those who listened. So Whirl didn’t. He just watched the coffin, knowing that tucked away inside was a Rodimus Star in Trailcutter’s hand, the one thing he had wanted nothing more than to be in possession of, to be honored by Rodimus with. It’s almost like a joke that here, now, while he’s dead, is when Rodimus is speaking his praises. Good mechs didn’t get what they deserved when they lived. It only ever came to them when they were dead.

Rather than be present for the send off of the coffin, Whirl walks the familiar halls to Swerve’s bar. He knows this was Trailcutter’s favorite place. He knows this was where he could always count on the bigger mech being, even after his chip had been disabled. There was an energy in the bar that had always caused one to feel like they mattered, even if outside the walls they didn’t. The bar is empty because of the fiasco of the bad energon but Whirl doesn’t care. He sits down anyway and orders one of the drinks he had seen in the deceased’s hands hundreds of times. He wants to raise a toast, but it’s hard when you don’t have real hands, but he mentally does anyway, before knocking the drink back. 

This is where Whirl stays for hours. He doesn’t attend Brainstorm’s trial, he doesn’t go to harass those in the halls like he usually would. He sits and drinks to the memory of the mech he had never wanted to admit was a friend, but whose absence would be felt for the rest of the journey.

**Author's Note:**

> So my skype group and I were musing one day and realized we have never seen Trailcutter's funeral in the comic. So I decided, why not write my own for him?


End file.
